Stay With Me, Little One
by Not2Cool
Summary: Leea Hartnel is five years old when she first meets the archangel Gabriel, when he descends from heaven and answers her father's prayers to save his little girl from a powerful spirit
1. Alone

Five-year-old Leea Hartnel found herself alone on the playground.

The other children were suddenly gone up in smoke, their parents - and most importantly, _her_ parent - nowhere to be seen.

Everything was deathly silent, the only sounds the creaking of an abandoned swing and Leea's own breaths rattling in her small chest.

Her blonde hair lifted lightly in a breeze now icy where it had been warm just moments before.

Leea shivered.

"Daddy?" Her voice echoed across the playground.

The swing creaked once more. The wood chips crunched loudly under her shifting feet. Her weak cough rang out across the play area, the sound bouncing off nearby sidewalks and vinyl siding to shout back at her.

Her daddy was gone. And so was everyone else.

Suddenly Leea had a terrible feeling; it started at the base of her spine and crept up her back to her neck, around over her ears and behind her eyes, making her head hurt.

Tears swelled in the child's misty grey eyes, and she hugged her thin jacket tight as the breeze only got colder. "Daddy!" She cried. "Daddy, where are you!"

No reply. The swing creaked again. The wood chips crunched louder.

"This is not funny, daddy!" Leea shouted, choking on frightened tears. "Why are you hiding? I'm scared, Daddy! Just, come out already!"

Fat droplets traced her pale cheeks, carving lines through the dust that had gathered as she played.

" _Daddy!"_ Leea cried as loud and as high as her voice could go, her small body jerking forward with the effort. "Daddy, _come back_!"

But her daddy did not come back. And the wind got even colder.

Leea shivered as her breath began to come out in cloudy puffs that she only ever saw when it snowed, and her scrambled mind remembered that it wasn't supposed to snow in October here.

What was happening? Where was her daddy?

Slowly, sniffing harshly. Leea tilted her head up to peer at the grey sky.

The clouds were dark and gloomy, but they did not cast down snow or hail or anything else. Why was it so cold?

Leea looked around the playground again, and she froze, her small heart nearly seizing in her chest; there Daddy was, but something was wrong with him.

He was on his knees, his head bowed, something clasped in his hands as his lips moved with chants he did not speak aloud.

Leea stared, paralyzed, trembling, as a thick red dripped from his between his fingers, from his hairline, from his eyes, out the soles of his cheap tennis shoes and through the collar of his button-up shirt and down his chest.

"D-Daddy?" She choked out as the scent of blood reached her.

Suddenly she wasn't alone anymore. Suddenly all the children and their parents were back, but they were not as when they left either.

They were all on the ground; that thick red clinging to them in all the same places it did on her daddy, but they were not upright and breathing as he was.

They were all terribly still, scattered about the playground as if they had dropped where they stood and lay there as the blood that kept them alive drained out through unseen wounds.

Leea couldn't move. She was trapped in place in fear and shock, her eyes hardly blinking as she looked down at the boy lying directly in front of her feet.

His name was James, and he was five years old too. He really liked his dog, Marco. He also really loved climbing on the monkey bars.

Leea had been playing with him just moments before; and here he was. He was on his back, staring up at her with dead eyes, blood smeared down his young round face and matting his feathery brown hair.

Leea stared back at him for what seemed like hours, and when her body finally unlocked, she screamed.

Her cry sliced through the quiet like a flaming sword through flesh.

Her daddy's head jerked up, and immediately he tucked it back down, his lips moving all the more, his sticky hands clinging to whatever was between them like it was all that kept him alive - and it was.

Leea wheezed out breaths, her lungs refusing to take anything in full as her stiff legs finally decided to move, and she fled to her daddy's side.

She dropped to her knees, skidding the last few inches to grasp his arm tightly and crush herself into his side, her harsh pants puffing out in icy clouds before her.

"D-d-daddy?" Leea strangled out. "D-daddy help them!"

But her daddy kept moving his lips, not looking at her, not acknowledging at all that she was clinging to him, that she needed him right now, that her young innocence had just been stabbed through its chest and was bleeding to death at his side as her shaking fingers grasped desperately at his sleeve.

The air was getting colder with each second; Leea could feel the sweat on her neck crystallizing, could see the frost creeping up the metal slide, could hear the distant laughter of something evil swirling around them in the wind.

Suddenly her daddy started saying his chants aloud.

It was no language Leea had ever heard - it was not Spanish, that was for certain, and though she had only heard a little bit of French she was not sure it was that either.

His voice grew louder, and louder, and without warning he shot to his feet and punched the air with whatever he had been holding. " _Suscipe me!_ "

Leea yelped and leaped back, tripping and falling back as blinding light arced down through the clouds and caught in her daddy's upward fist.

It crackled around his bleeding body, hissing and popping and randomly spiking out before there was a loud _SNAP!_ and it was gone.

Her daddy collapsed back to his knees.

Leea lay there, propped up on scraped elbows, the back of her head stinging from the fall and her eyes screaming from the light. She squinted desperately, trying to see if her daddy was okay, even if her heart pounded heavily and her throbbing head wanted to lie down and never sit back up…

The wind was laughing again, and it was getting louder.

Dust gathered and swirled in front of her daddy's kneeling form, twisting and swirling into the vague shape of a person.

Her daddy's head snapped up.

The dust person laughed once more. " _You should not have come here, Gabriel._ "


	2. Gabriel

Leea was frozen again, her misty eyes locked on her dad as his body shifted, as his muscles moved as if testing themselves, as he rocked on his bloody shoes when he raised himself to his full height, his jaw tight, his eyes cold and determined as red dripped from his lashes and from the tip of his nose.

She wanted to call out to him. To scream to him to stay down. That it wasn't safe.

She could see it in her head already - his body on the ground, his eyes as lifeless as James's, his limbs just as still, his breaths gone and his heartbeat ceased.

But her daddy did not hear the strangled sounds she forced through her lips. He did not look to her. He did not flinch. He did not waver.

He looked right at the person of swirling dust, and he did not look afraid. His hands no longer shook, his brows no longer quivered, he no longer chanted those desperate words.

" _All that has happened,_ " The dust figure hummed, " _And you arrive now?_ "

Her dad did not speak. He did not blink. He still did not look afraid, even as the dust person's words brushed over his face in light puffs of wind that carried crumbled leaves and dead grasses.

" _Really, Gabriel_." The dust figure smiled, a cruel, terrible thing to look at. " _After everything you've seen, you leave heaven for the pleas of a broken, half dead man?_ "

Leea's dad spoke, and his voice was flat. It did not quake, it held no tremor, no worry.

"A broken, half dead _father_."

" _Because you care so much about the human children._ " The dust person chuckled, the sound as terrible as his smile. " _Really, Gabriel. Don't you think you're overreacting a little bit?_ "

Her dad shrugged. "Don't you think you're overdoing the title of reaper of possibility a little bit?"

" _Can you really blame me?_ "

"I really can."

The face of dust and debris twisted into a frown. " _Come long, it's just a bit of fun. You of all creatures should understand that!_ "

"Understand?" Leea's dad stepped forward, his chest almost touching the outer layer of cluttered wind. "Oh, I understand - do you have any idea what you are doing? Do you know who that girl is? Who _this man_ is?"

There was a pause as the dust figure seemed to look Leea's daddy up and down.

" _He holds no special qualities. Did you seriously think I would kill without checking first? These people are no more important than any others I have killed._ "

Leea's dad fisted his hands, his voice morphing into something between a growl and a hiss. "You should have looked closer." He made a sound akin to a snarl. "Get out of here, Agrex."

In the next breath the swirl of debris that was _Agrex_ had vanished.

Everything was silent again.

Once more the swing creaked. Leea's breaths rattled in her chest. The wood chips crunched under her slipping hands.

"D-daddy?" She choked out.

Her daddy turned, but even at her young age Leea had already begun to realize that those inhumanly bright blue eyes did not belong to her father.

Blood squeaked in the soles of her dad's shoes as he shifted on his feet, turning to face her. He looked down, taking in the mess of blood that covering him as if seeing it for the first time.

"D...daddy?" Leea tried, tears once more welling in her eyes as her body regained its ability to function.

He looked to her, finally, and when he met her gaze Leea knew this was not her daddy. Her daddy's eyes could never glow the way these did. They could never look so cold and so bright at the same time.

"I am not your father." This new man said quietly.

Leea swallowed hard. "I… I know."

The man took the few steps required to reach her, and he looked down almost curiously. "My name is Gabriel."

Leea blinked up at him. "W-where is my daddy?"

Gabriel considered this for a moment, his gaze softening slightly. He knelt, slowly so as not to frighten her, and rested a soft hand on her knee. "It is hard to explain. But your father is safe. He will return to you soon."

"When?" Leea sniffed. "When will daddy come back?"

Gabriel offered a small smile. "Very soon, little one. First I have to clean up Agrex's mess."

James's dead eyes staring into hers flashed through Leea's mind, and she sucked in a breath. "J-James!" She lurched forward to grasp Gabriel's sleeve in her small hands. "Ca-an you f-fix James?"

Gabriel frowned. He rose to his feet, gently prying her shaking fingers out of the fabric and stepping back. "It will be alright, little one. Stay there for me; I mean it - sit right there."

Leea choked on tears as she watched as Gabriel circled the playground, bending at each corpse to brush the eyes closed. With each touch, a shimmer rippled over the body, but was gone before Gabriel could even straighten himself.

When he had made his way around the entire play area, Gabriel once again knelt in front of Leea.

"Look at me, little one."

Leea raised her glassy eyes to meet the glowing blue ones in front of her. "You can't fix them, can you?" She sobbed quietly. "They are all broken and you can't fix them."

Gabriel's expression tensed, his features drawing into a slight wince, but his gaze never wavering. "I am sorry, little one." He said softly. "I can't."

Leea searched her mind desperately. "H-hospital! Daddy says tha-that hospitals have lots-s of doc-doctors. Doctors fix broken people, right?"

Gabriel sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "The doctors can't fix this kind of broken."

"Well why not?!" Leea cried.

Gabriel flinched at the high-pitch so close to his ear. "I told you, little one." He reached out a hand and lightly patted her hair. "They can't be fixed."

Leea stared at him for a long moment, then dropped her head to her chest and sobbed.

She sat like like that for several minutes, Gabriel soothingly finger-combing her short blonde hair, and when she finally looked up her eyes fell to his chest.

"You… you're glowing."

Gabriel looked down. A faint white and yellow light shone through the blood-soaked button-up, and it was warm, like a beam of spring sun. He looked back up.

"Your father is coming back now," he told Leea. "I am leaving, but he will take care of you."

Leea sniffed. "Where… where are you going?"

The corner of Gabriel's mouth twitched in a way that Leea's father's never would have, and he raised his other hand to point up. "Home."

Leea looked up, and saw nothing but grey clouds hovering high above. "You live in the clouds?"

"Above the clouds." Gabriel said. "Maybe we'll meet again someday. Goodbye, little one."

"How can you live abo-" Leea looked back to Gabriel just in time to see her daddy's body erupt back into crackling light, and she let out a screech.

The scene from before played out in reverse - the light spun and jabbed out and hissed and in less than a full second it had arched back into the sky, and was gone forever.

Leea's dad gasped, falling forward onto his hands and knees beside her, gagging for air. His eyes were back to the same misty grey as Leea's own.

"D-daddy?" Leea cried.

Still struggling for breath, her dad sat back on his heels and pulled her small body into his lap, hugging her closer than either of them knew was possible. Leea hugged him back, and fresh tears spilled from her eyes.

"D-dad-ddy." She sobbed into his bloody shirt-front. "Y-you're b-b-back!"

"I'm back, sweetie." He panted into her scalp. "I'm back. It's okay. I'm back."

Leea twisted in his grip to wrap her short legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder. "Oh, daddy."

Through eyes blurred with tears Leea tilted her head up slightly, settling her chin on her dad's shoulder and looking to where that blinding light had shot into the sky.

Her whole body was shouting for her to heart to keep pounding, her body to keep shaking even as the threat was gone. Shouting for to _look around! There are dead bodies all around you! James is a corpse at the foot of the slide! How can you calm down now!_

But there was a single thing, a single thought, that had her heart-beat settling, her muscles relaxing into her daddy's death grip - the thought that she didn't have to be afraid. Because if that dust person, that _thing_ came back… it would be okay.

Because Gabriel wasn't really gone forever, was he?

For the sake of her own sanity, Leea chose to believe he wasn't, and with that she buried her face back in her dad's shirt and promptly lost consciousness.


	3. Twenty Years Later

Leea was in the middle of tying her hair back in a bun when her phone started to ring, the vibrations causing it to buzz across the bathroom counter.

With a scowl she stabbed at her hair with a clip and picked up the device. "Hartnel speaking."

"I know it's a little early," the young male voice was obviously shaky, even over the phone. "But any chance you could come in now?"

Leea chewed her lip as she tugged her tie off where it hung on the door handle. "What's going on, Jeffrey?"

"Uh… it's not exactly easy to explain."

"Give it a go." Leea put the phone on speaker and set it back on the counter so she could knot the tie.

"Well… we've kind of had a murder."

Leea froze. "A murder." She repeated. "In this town? Are… are you drunk or something, Jeffrey?"

"Leea!" Jeffrey cried. "I never drink on the job!"

"Sorry, sorry," Leea resumed knotting her tie. "It just seemed more likely than a… a murder."

Jeffrey was quiet a moment. "...Yeah." He breathed.

Leea sighed, rolling her collar down and reaching to button her sleeves at her wrists. "So… who's dead?"

Jeffrey took a moment to reply. "Um… why don't you just get down to the station?"

Leea frowned. "Have you called my dad?"

"Didn't have to." Jeffrey said, dropping his voice to a whisper. "He's who found the body on his way to work."

Leea cringed. "Do we have enough people on the scene or should I head there instead of the station?"

"Uh…" There was a clicking as Jeffrey tapped a finger on his screen in thought. "No, I've already sent Jacobs and Marley down there, on top of whoever else packed up and went without being told."

"Alright." Leea snatched her phone off the counter and exited the bathroom. "I'll see you in ten."


	4. Sunshine

Leea watched as officers she knew like siblings trickled back to the station, faces ashen as they plopped into their chairs and uselessly tried to shake away to images of the town's first murder victim in thirty-seven.

Her badge weighed heavy on her chest, a constant reminder that this was, in fact, her problem.

She watched the doors swing open and closed six times before the person she was waiting for came through - immediately Leea was on her feet, crossing to walk beside the man in his late forties.

"Dad, what the hell is going on?" She asked. "The guys are coming back all clammed up and looking like they're either going to cry or puke or both."

Her father gave her a long sigh, not replying until they had weaved through the small police station to his office.

Leea waited as he shut the door behind them. As he wearily took of his sheriff's hat and hung it on the hook behind his desk. As he settled in his chair and rubbed his eyes with another sigh.

"Leea, it has been a long day."

"No shit, dad." Leea put her hands on her hips. "Now what's going on out there? Like I said, nobody's talking. It's like they're all paralyzed or something."

The sheriff drew out yet another sigh and let his arms drop to the armrests on his chair. "Come here, Leea."

Leea frowned. "Come… where?"

Her father waved a tired hand at the place at his side.

Confused, Leea rounded to stand directly next to his chair and lean back against his desk, folding her arms as her frown deepened. "What's happening, dad?"

The sheriff chewed his lip, his eyes distant for a long while before he finally focused on her. "Twenty years ago, Leea."

Leea narrowed her eyes. "What about it?"

"What to do you remember from twenty years ago?"

Leea stared. She stared and stared, right into his eyes, but he did not waver. He did not look away. He was deathly serious.

"Is…" Leea swallowed. "But.. it can't be… we moved, dad. Everything is different here, you said so yourself. No more… that."

"Yeah," her father breathed. "And I thought it was true at the time."

Leea found her eyes lost in the cheap wallpaper behind the sheriff's desk, her thoughts racing.

She could hear the creaking swing. Feel her breaths rattling in her chest. The wood chips grinding under her feet as she shifted weight nervously.

No, she couldn't be back here! Leea looked down - there he was. James. His round face still, his bright cherry lips parted, his large eyes staring up at her as red streaked his face like he had been crying tears of blood.

The swing creaked. The wood chips crunched. She drew in another shaking breath, unable to scream. The wood chips. Creak. Rattle. Crunch. Rattle. Creak. Crun-

"Leea?"

Leea nearly jumped out of her skin when she found herself suddenly back in her father's office. Back to twenty-five years old. Back to five-foot five. Back to restful nights and steady thoughts in a present so distant from the one she had just left.

She patted her chest, silently reassuring herself that she was, in fact, really here, before looking to her dad. "Um.. sorry. I was thinking."

"Yeah," her father offered a weak but understanding smile. "It's okay. I think sometimes too."

Leea turned away from the wall, forcing all her attention on her father to ground herself. "The body." She said. "It was…?"

"Dead." The sheriff said. "It was dead."

Leea pursed her lips. "You don't say, dad?"

He chuckled lightly. "Sorry. I guess I'm a little out of it as well… but yes, it was… like before. Like… twenty years ago."

"Painted in its own blood with no actual wounds to be found." Leea said.

"Like he'd just fallen over where he stood and died." His eyes grew distant again.

Leea fiddled with her tie clip. It was a habit she really needed to break, as it always wrinkled the fabric of both the tie and shirt, but right now she couldn't care less about her appearance.

"Agrex is back, then." Leea said. "And we have no means of our own to chase him off, unless…"

She watched her father hopefully, but his eyes refused to meet hers, still off in whatever distant world he had set them in.

"The archangel Gabriel," he said finally, "will not save us this time."

Leea blinked. "W-what?"

Her father smiled sadly. "I have kept you safe all this time, my girl. The world Gabriel comes from is a dangerous one; and it has only gotten more dangerous recently."

"So?" Leea said. "It was dangerous back then too, and he still came."

Her father sighed, yet again. "Gabriel helped us out of duty," he explained, as if back to speaking with scared and curious five-year-old Leea rather than the young woman beside him. "That duty is gone now. We are alone."

Leea scowled. "Duty? Do you remember nothing of that day?"

"Oh, sunshine." Her dad hummed. "There is so much you do not know…"

Leea fell silent - he hadn't called her sunshine since she was thirteen years old. She felt her eyes start to water and quickly swiped at them. No, she was not going to cry. She hadn't cried since that day twenty years ago and she sure as hell wasn't going to cry now.

Whenever she had been scared, whenever the shadows in her room at night loomed, whenever she been faced by bullies or adults who for some reason hated her for her tragic history, she had kept her head up.

She hadn't cried, she hadn't broken under the pressure, because she had something they didn't - she had Gabriel.

And if Agrex ever dared show his face again, she knew in the bottom of her heart that those blue eyes would appear to chase him away.

It was a childish mental wall that had kept her propped up for two decades, and Leea couldn't let it crumble now. By this point it was practically the pillars holding up her sanity.

"No!" She shouted.

Her father jumped at the sudden outburst, flinching out of his own daydream to blink at her with wide eyes. "No? No what?"

"Gabriel wouldn't abandon us!" Something shook, and Leea barely registered that it was her own fist slamming down on the desk. "How can you say that?"

"Leea!" Her father hissed. "Quiet down! The others will hear!"

Leea dropped her volume, but not her tone as the flame in her chest poured itself into her words. "I looked into his eyes, dad, I spoke to him! Those are not the eyes of a creature who saved us because he was ordered to! When he spoke to Agrex, do you know what he said? He said he answered your prayers over the others who cried for him because you were a _father_. I may not know the ways of his world but," she drew in a much need breath, panting a little as she searched her father's eyes. "I know the ways of good men."

Her father was silent a long time.

The clock ticked a whole one minute. Two. Three.

"Leea," he said quietly. "You were just a child then - barely five years old. You did not know what you were seeing."

"Don't start that shit, dad." Leea said firmly. "You may have hosted Gabriel, but I am the one whose consciousness was present through it all. I know what I saw, dad. And Gabriel. Would not. Just. Abandon us."

Her father licked his lips thoughtfully as another minute ticked by. "I cannot pretend to change my mind, Leea." He said. "But if it is Agrex - and there is little doubt that it is - then it is not like there is anything else we can do." He straightened in his wooden chair, reaching out to neaten the file folders on his desk. "Pray to whom you like. It cannot be any less effective than playing along with the murder-by-rare-poison that the boys have come up with."

Leea again swiped at her eyes when they began to tingle. "Good luck, dad."

"Be careful, Leea."

"Yeah, sure."

And she left his office.


End file.
